Hezekiah

Hezekiah (Hebrew: חזקיה or חזקיהו, "whom God has strengthened") was king of Judah, the son of Ahaz and Abi (2 Kings 18:1-2) or Abijah (2 Chronicles 29:1). He reigned twenty-nine years (2 Kings 18:2). William F. Albright has dated his reign to 715 BCE-687 BCE, while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 716 BCE-687 BCE.

Chronological Problems

There is considerable uncertainty about the actual dates of his reign. First, the Biblical records conflict, as they do for a number of rulers of Israel and Judah. 2 Kings 18:10 dates the fall of Samaria to the sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, which would make 728 BCE the year of his accession. However, verse 13 of the same chapter states that Sennacherib invaded Judah in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah; the Assyrian records leave no doubt that this invasion took place in 701 BCE, which would fix 715 BCE as Hezekiah's initial year, which would be confirmed by the account of his illness. In chapter 18 of 2 Kings it is stated that during the 14th year of his reign, Sennacherib had returned to pillage Samaria, setting up his base of operations at Lachish and threatening Jerusalem, forcing Hezekiah to pay tribute. As the description in chapter 20 of Hezekiah's illness immediately follows Sennacherib's departure, this would date his illness to his 14th year, which is confirmed by Isaiah's statement that he will live fifteen more years (29-15=14). His fourteenth year being 701 BCE, the first must have been 715 BCE.

Related Topics:
Samaria - 728 BCE - Sennacherib - 701 BCE - 715 BCE - Lachish

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Another set of calculations show it is probable that Hezekiah did not ascend the throne before 722 BCE. By Albright's calculations, Jehu's initial year is 842 BCE; and between it and Samaria's destruction the Books of Kings give the total number of the years the kings of Israel ruled as 143 7/12, while for the kings of Judah the number is 165. This discrepancy, amounting in the case of Judah to 45 years (165-120), has been accounted for in various ways; but every one of those theories must allow that Hezekiah's first six years as well as Ahaz's last two fell before 722 BCE. Nor is it clearly known how old Hezekiah was when called to the throne, although 2 Kings 18:2 states he was twenty-five years of age. His father (2 Kings 16:2) died at the age of thirty-six; it is not likely that Ahaz at the age of eleven should have had a son. Hezekiah's own son Manasseh ascended the throne twenty-nine years later, at the age of twelve. This places his birth in the seventeenth year of his father's reign, or gives Hezekiah's age as forty-two, if he was twenty-five at his ascension. It is more probable that Ahaz was twenty-one or twenty-five when Hezekiah was born (and suggesting an error in the text), and that the latter was thirty-two at the birth of his son and successor, Manasseh.

Related Topics:
722 BCE - Jehu - 842 BCE - Ahaz - Manasseh

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Still another date is possible by astronomical calculations. 2 Kings 20:8-11 speaks obscurely about "the shadow" moving "ten degrees" during the above mentioned illness of Hezekiah (as does Isaiah 38:7f). Professor Aurel Ponori-Thewrewk, retired director of the planetarium of Budapest, Hungary, may have been the first scholar to offer an astronomical explanation for this passage; observing that new Bible translations use "the sundial of Ahaz," while other Bibles "the stairway of Ahaz," he states that the original Hebrew text says ma(c)alóth, the plural of ma(c)alah. Therefore, his conclusion is that it had a double meaning: while it refers to the steps over which the shadow has already passed, it may have meant the instrument (?) of Ahaz which had obviously contained more than ten units, and on which Hezekiah could observe the movement of the sun's shadow. But whatever was the original meaning of the Hebrew word, Ponori-Thewrewk says, the shadow had made an abnormal movement on it. He imagines a pole or gnomon that casts a shadow on a plane that is perpendicular to it. The shadow can move ahead for a while, then it can move backward on that plane.

Related Topics:
Aurel Ponori-Thewrewk - Budapest - Hungary - Bible - Gnomon

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John D. Davis, Davis dictionary of the Bible (Baker Book House, 1975: 184) confirms the possibility that 2 Kings 20:11 and Isaiah 38:8 may be explained by a solar eclipse, and the stairway of Ahaz may have been a sundial with a projecting gnomon to cast a shadow. The foretold backward position of the sun's shadow, could have been caused by an eclipse of the sun, probably on May 6, 724 BCE. This eclipse took place between 6:09 and 8:24 a.m., its maximum was 64.3% at 7:15 a.m. This would then date Hezekiah's first year as king to 738 BCE, and his last to 709 BCE. It is possible that Isaiah (38: 7-8) had been informed beforehand by an astronomer, perhaps by one of Merodach-baladan's envoys, about the expected date of a solar eclipse on May 6, so Isaiah comforted the king on May 3.

Related Topics:
John D. Davis - Solar eclipse - Sundial - Gnomon - May 6 - 724 BCE - 738 BCE - 709 BCE - May 3

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An alternative interpretation of Hezekiah's reign spans 727 BCE-698 BCE with Manasseh co-reigning for some years as a teenager. This attempts to harmonize the reference to Hezekiah reigning during the conquest of Samaria (2 Kings 18:9-10), and assumes the reference to Sennacherib's attack in 701 was either a second campaign or that the reference to it being in Hezekiah's 14th year is a corruption.

Related Topics:
727 BCE - 698 BCE - Manasseh - Samaria - Sennacherib

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